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Don Basilio
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« Reply #4455 on: 09:22:58, 22-05-2008 » |
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George Bernard Shaw would be irritated. There he was thinking he was radical cutting edge, and now he is just an Edwardian who wrote the scenario for a musical for Rex Harrison.
We're going to see Major Barbara at the National next month.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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George Garnett
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« Reply #4456 on: 09:27:44, 22-05-2008 » |
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George Bernard Shaw would be irritated. Sole purpose of the list.  |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #4457 on: 10:42:12, 22-05-2008 » |
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I have to admit I haven't seen any other plays by Tennessee Williams - but after this Glass Menagerie I'll be on the look-out for another.
Not even Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? I've always loved the French title for its extra layer of meaning... |
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #4458 on: 11:02:47, 22-05-2008 » |
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A Gentleman Caller writes: Oi! Polite cough. If we're playing lists ...   Further polite cough: does Chekhov actually count as a C20th dramatist, though, GG? He died in 1904, and only The Cherry Orchard was written after 1900, making it his sole C20th piece. I'd agree that he's an important and influential figure, but it could be cogently argued that modern drama really starts in the late C19th, with Ibsen and Strindberg as well as Chekhov breaking old moulds and establishing the new patterns for development, and that although we may think of them as crucial to C20th drama, all three of them hardly saw it ( d. 1906, 1912, 1904 respectively.) |
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George Garnett
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« Reply #4459 on: 11:17:34, 22-05-2008 » |
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My excuse was that Uncle Vanya (1900), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) were all first performed in the 20th century whereas I don't think Ibsen wrote anything significant after When We Dead Awaken (1899), did he (?).
But on reflection I am more than prepared to take the seminal, if dusty, events of 1908 as marking the true beginning of that confused and decadent century and on those grounds Mr Chekkhoughh does indeed miss the boat.
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Ted Ryder
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« Reply #4460 on: 11:25:12, 22-05-2008 » |
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How very strange to leave out Pinter. Is his reputation taking a post mortem "nose-dive" whilst he is still very much with us? There was a rather "sniffy" review of a current production of "The Birthday Party".-- Call for Mr Hobson. Sorry I seem to be in the wrong room.
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« Last Edit: 11:28:16, 22-05-2008 by Ted Ryder »
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I've got to get down to Sidcup.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #4461 on: 11:38:42, 22-05-2008 » |
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Ted, we did say 'for starters....': Pinter, Osborne and Wesker, Hare and Brenton, Fry, Priestley and Eliot, even Ayckbourn all might have claims for inclusion on my personal list...
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Ted Ryder
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« Reply #4462 on: 12:31:43, 22-05-2008 » |
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Ron, I just thought Pinter should be in the vanguard. "Family Reunion" is great fun but can Eliot's plays have a "claim" to the first rank? One English language play-wright that I hope will eventually find his way on to the list is Howard Barker but, as I am aware of the reaction of many to his plays, I'll just get me coat.
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I've got to get down to Sidcup.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #4463 on: 12:53:51, 22-05-2008 » |
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Ted, much as I loathed Murder in the Cathedral when I saw it as a teenager, I have a feeling that it deserves some credit. The arrival of the movies and television means that some playwrights were lured away to other things, so perhaps we need to redefine the term in any case: dramatist? That opens up a vista where we might find Robert Bolt and Christopher Hampton amongst others, not to mention figures such as Dennis Potter .
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #4464 on: 12:59:30, 22-05-2008 » |
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Nominations for ten (well, eleven) best playwrights of the 20th century:
Frank Wedekind
Bertolt Brecht
Federico Garcia Lorca
Alfred Jarry
Eugene Ionesco
Jean Genet
Samuel Beckett
Peter Weiss
Dario Fo
Heiner Müller
Tadeusz Kantor
Nearly made it: Jean-Paul Sartre, Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, Howard Barker, Sarah Kane. Wasn't sure about including Strindberg - only died six years before Wedekind, but somehow I think of him as late-19th rather than early-20th century. Some figures like Edward Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, Robert Wilson, Augusto Boal, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, don't really count as 'playwrights', because of the lesser role for a 'text' in the more conventional sense in their work, but perhaps they should be included nonetheless? The problem with the canonisation of the 'playwright' is that it tends to relegate other aspects of theatre production (and, for that matter, whole sub-genres of theatre, not least that which doesn't 'stop at the neck', as one of my colleagues here described a lot of British theatre) to a secondary status.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #4465 on: 13:26:59, 22-05-2008 » |
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Ted, much as I loathed Murder in the Cathedral when I saw it as a teenager, I have a feeling that it deserves some credit.
I absolutely loved it when I was a teenager - I first saw it on a school trip, in the Parish Church in Ludlow. At one point I could recite yards of it. Haven't looked at it for ages, but I suspect I mightn't be quite so keen now. |
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Ted Ryder
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« Reply #4466 on: 13:32:04, 22-05-2008 » |
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Do mention Potter Ron- I love every thing by Dennis (even "Black Eyes")
Ian, for me a "play" is some thing that can be staged with six actors & a settee, although I am not against burying a couple of them up to their necks in sand.
Theatre Complicite and Peter Brook is "Circus" PB's "Midsummer Night's Dream" was magic and the magic has lived with me for decades but I never thought it was Shakespeare's play.
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I've got to get down to Sidcup.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #4467 on: 13:52:02, 22-05-2008 » |
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I'd have to say that Ian's list is by far the most convincing yet: in between other tasks today I'd not given it that much thought, but I'd happily concur with virtually every name.
Mary, I too saw Murder in the Cathedral with a school party - a Saturday matinee at another school, with a cast that included one of our staff, though not one I knew well. With hindsight, I'd guess that it was as much down to inept direction as the piece itself.
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #4468 on: 14:09:12, 22-05-2008 » |
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I'm not being drawn on this one (yet!) - and the Afternoon Play is about to begin - but seeing Robert Donat as Becket in 'Murder in the Cathedral' at the Old Vic in 1953 was a quite memorable experience. I still have a recording on vinyl.
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MabelJane
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« Reply #4469 on: 22:08:16, 22-05-2008 » |
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Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
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